


And Then All At Once

by TakingOverMidnight3482



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: I have no idea what I'm doing, M/M, Reincarnation AU, but it's sappy and angsty at the same time, keith and lance were zuko and sokka, multiple kinds of soulmates exist in this universe, past lives au, set before season 8, whoomp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-14 17:30:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20196016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TakingOverMidnight3482/pseuds/TakingOverMidnight3482
Summary: Lance’s fingers dusted along Keith’s cheekbone and the feeling was so raw and painful and wrong that Keith jolted again, his own hand darting up to catch Lance’s wrist. Lance stilled, fingertips pressed against the high rise of Keith’s cheekbone, where the scar started. A heartbeat passed, two, three.“You had a scar,” Lance managed to breathe, tracing the outline with dancing fingers. “Here.”~~Past-Lives au where Lance and Keith just happened to be Sokka and Zuko. One-shot.





	And Then All At Once

**Author's Note:**

> I've never done anything like this before, so I was just kind of making up the rules as I go. Got into a zukka mood and that's how this came about. 
> 
> Set through seasons 1-7, with little blurbs highlighting specific moments. I'll be honest, I haven't watched atla in a while so if anything is off let me know. 
> 
> First time I've written something in....weeks. It feels good. I hope it turned out well, too.

It started like a stereotypical John Green novel – slowly, and then all at once.

The first moment was as Lance was easing Shiro’s arm over his shoulders, lifting his eyes to give Keith the quick retort that lay on his tongue. Their gazes locked and for a moment, Keith’s eyes flickered to a soft, incredibly light brown, closer to gold than anything, before they slipped back to their odd purple hue.

“Who are you?”

Lance scoffed. “Who am I? Uh, the name’s _Lance._” His name felt thick on his tongue, like it wasn’t right. Wasn’t true. The feeling faded almost as quickly as it had come, and Lance realized that Keith still hadn’t responded. “We were in the same class at the Garrison?”

Keith’s – why did that feel wrong? – eyebrows lifted. “Really? Are you an engineer?”

“No, I’m a pilot! We were like, rivals!” That felt right. Perfectly right. “You know, Lance and Keith, neck and neck?” Wrong again.

“Oh wait, I remember you, you’re a cargo pilot.”

The wrongness – wrong wrong wrong – washed off of Lance’s neck at the sheer irritation he felt towards this asshole in front of him, and it didn’t matter anyway, because in less than 24 hours they were in space, on a castle, with a princess, and Keith’s eyes were solidly purple.

~~

The next moment, Keith was leaning over Lance, eyes – purple – lit with concern, hand extending. Lance took it, a flash, the feeling he was falling and his arm being ripped from his socket as he was captured, pulled, back to safety. Keith’s eyes were gold again, wider, his lips parted as he searched Lance.

He took the outstretched hand slowly, giving Keith a soft smile even as his eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “We did it. We are a good team.”

The gold faded as Keith’s smile grew, and the ache in Lance’s chest widened.

~~

The third time, they were sliding, back to back, down the walls of the elevator shaft. The scene shifted around him and suddenly Lance had a flash – falling off a moving…_something_…hundreds of feet above the Earth, or maybe it was the sea.

Keith’s arms tightened and Lance looked back as they stopped moving. Gold eyes, wide with fear. A moment, a flicker of something on his face, and in another flash, Lance was looking up at him, gripping his arm tight.

Another flash, and the scene was reversed. Keith was leaping, flying, clothes in rags, and Lance was catching him, pulling him in. In the next instant, everything was normal, Keith now staring back at Lance like…like he too, had seen everything Lance just had.

A name formed in the back of Lance’s throat, panic and…and relief? Settling into his stomach. Settling into his chest. He couldn’t bring himself to say it. He didn’t think Keith would appreciate it, not right now.

The way Keith was staring, Lance almost thought he’d say something first.

_A prince. _

It fit, somehow.

He didn’t say that.

“You’re pushing too hard.”

“Well you’re not pushing hard enough!”

They didn’t talk about it.

~~

For a while, Lance was sure he had just been hallucinating. Every now and then Keith would say something or laugh a certain way, and his eyes would flash gold, or Lance would make a stupid joke and he’d catch Keith staring at him like he was trying to finish a puzzle and was missing a piece on the floor. They didn’t acknowledge it, merely moved on.

“I’m Galra.”

And his hair was practically gone, save for a bit on his head pulled back into a ponytail. There was a dramatic scar across the left side of his face that hadn’t been there moments ago. Lance tried hard to bite back his yelp, but the pained look in Keith’s golden, _human_ eyes as he turned to him proved he had not been successful.

“I’m sorry,” Keith said, his head lowering, and suddenly his mullet was back, drifting across his cheeks to hide the scar, to hide the shame in his still-gold eyes. “I’ll give you all time to process.”

His steps were loud, the room deafeningly silent, and Lance found himself pursuing without thinking. He caught up to Keith quickly but said nothing. For a long minute, the hum of the ship was the only sound.

“You don’t have to say anything,” Keith said. His hands twisted, trembled as they caught one another and clung. “I-”

“Have you been seeing it too?” Lance interrupted, more focused on _the fucking scar on Keith’s face why was it there was he okay? _When Keith lifted his eyes, confused, they were purple again. They had stopped moving, faced each other.

“Seen what?” Keith asked, brows furrowed.

Lance lifted a hand and Keith jerked back, gaze following Lance’s touch. His breath hitched, and when Lance followed his look, his own skin flickered between lighter and darker tones. He swallowed and turned back to Keith, hand still between them.

“Can I?”

Keith’s tongue peeked out between his lips for just a second and his eyes, scared but curious, locked with Lance’s. He nodded, once.

Lance’s fingers dusted along Keith’s cheekbone and the feeling was so raw and painful and _wrong _that Keith jolted again, his own hand darting up to catch Lance’s wrist. Lance stilled, fingertips pressed against the high rise of Keith’s cheekbone, where the scar started. A heartbeat passed, two, three.

“You had a scar,” Lance managed to breathe, tracing the outline with dancing fingers. “Here.”

Keith’s breathing stuttered and his grip on Lance tightened. “Lance.” His voice cracked.

The scar faded and Lance was left staring at Keith, fully Keith, shaking in front of him with tears in his eyes. Lance softened and slid his hand around the back of his head, pulling him into a firm hug, burying his fingers into the softness of his hair and shutting his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

Because it was too much. Being Galra, being the enemy, and then also being…something. Someone else. Lance…Lance was okay. He knew it would happen one day. Keith did too, of course, but to have it happen on top of this? On top of a war, on top of the realization that his mother was a literal alien, on top of being abandoned his whole life?

Lance couldn’t imagine it all at once.

“I’m here,” was all he could say. “I’m here.”

Keith’s watery snort and the way he tightened his grip made Lance slump in relief. “Apparently you always have been.”

And that…that acknowledgment…that made Lance’s heart soar.

~~

When Keith left, it was like…Lance didn’t have an analogy. Keith left, Matt appeared, and suddenly he lost his two best friends. Shiro was weird, Allura didn’t like him, and Lance…Lance missed his soulmate.

Because that’s who Keith was.

Lance knew that. He was pretty confident Keith knew that, too.

Past-Life soulmates were rare on Earth, but not rare enough that they weren’t heard of. Lance knew that if you were born into a family that had Past-Life soulmates, you were more likely to have one as well.

His grandparents had been Past-Live’s, 200 years ago in rural America. Lance had never heard much of their story; it was considered impolite to ask, given that some Past-Life soulmates had had…not so great pasts together. He knew that it started by seeing physical attributes change in the soulmate. It followed with surroundings flickering, memories resurfacing, names…

Lance had a lot of time to think, while Keith was gone.

While he was alone in his room.

He’d had a sister. He couldn’t remember her name, barely remembered her face. What he did remember – she’d had magic. Some kind, anyway. Lance hadn’t. He remembered that vividly, maybe because it was about him. He remembered being bitter about it.

Water.

It made Lance chuckle when the memory surfaced. Seemed Blue hadn’t chosen him at random.

And Keith…

He’d been the enemy. A prince. With fire.

Red hadn’t chosen at random either, apparently.

Sometimes when it was late and everyone was asleep, Lance would go to the kitchen and pour himself a glass of water. Set it on the counter. Focus.

He knew it wouldn’t happen. Knew that even in his past life, he couldn’t. But man, would it have been hella cool.

His parents (in his current life) had found each other with Soul Marks, the most common way to find your soulmate on Earth. Over 80% of people had Soul Marks, though how they worked tended to differ. Some people could write on their skin and have it show up on the other’s, some had first words, still others had matching tattoo-like marks.

His sister Veronica shared dreams with her soulmate. She had never told him much, but he knew her soulmate was a woman, tall, and in her dreams she looked purple. That was typical of Dream Mates, distorted in some way to prevent people from discovering each other too soon, but since meeting the Galra, Lance had started to wonder.

And he…Lance had to laugh. From what he could remember, his and Keith’s lives were playing out scary similar to their last lives. Rivals in the beginning, eventual friends, fighting a war together with unlikely odds stacked against them. Last time they had powers (or, most of them did), this time they had a giant magical cat robot.

Needless to say, it was a weird couple weeks for Lance by himself.

~~

Keith came back taller. More rugged. Grizzled. And he looked past Lance like…like nothing had ever happened. Like it was meaningless.

And it stung.

Stung through Shiro’s betrayal, stung through the fight with Lotor, stung through the castle being destroyed. It stung when they realized it had been years since they had been heard from, stung during the stupid fucking stupid game show, stung when they found Kolivan and left him and Krolia behind.

It stung less when they found Earth, when Lance collapsed into the arms of his mother, his father, his brothers and sisters and niece and nephew. When he found Hunk alone and hugged him tight, encouraged Silvio and Nadia to show him their drawings and make him feel better.

It stung a lot more when Veronica found him that night in his room and pulled it out of him, because of course she knew. Of course she had seen it in him. He cried, telling her, and she dragged him in tight for a hug. Asked him questions he had always been too scared to ask his grandparents.

“What was your sister’s name?”

He’d remembered, on the trip. He’d remembered a lot.

“Katara. You remind me of her.”

Veronica’s grip tightened and Lance gripped back. It was weird – no longer being one person. It was disorienting. He wondered, perhaps a little belatedly, if Keith felt that way sometimes. “Do you remember your name?”

Lance shook his head. His name was the one that remained fuzzy. The only one that remained fuzzy, and it drove him mad. Veronica tactfully steered him to a different subject. “What was it like?”

Lance snorted and settled down, telling her stories of what he could remember – benders, water, earth, fire, air. The war. The Avatar. Keith. Or maybe it was Zuko. He didn’t know. He wasn’t sure.

“I wonder why no one has those powers now,” Veronica mused somewhere around 2 am.

Lance pressed his lips together. “Well not everyone was a bender in the first place. I mean, a whole nation was wiped out during the war. My- Katara was the only water bender in the South Pole. I…I imagine something happened after we all died that forced it to die out. Maybe that’s how soulmates became a thing instead, because…because they weren’t. Back then.”

“Jeez,” Veronica said, shaking her head. “How _long _has it been?”

Lance huffed out a watery breath. “I don’t know. I don’t remember dates. Like in general, not like we didn’t have them.”

“Why now?” Veronica wondered, and when Lance looked at her, she tilted her head. “I mean, assuming it’s not random…why reincarnate you now?”

Lance could think of only one reason, and he sighed, squeezing his eyes shut. “Voltron.”

~~

A week after Lance woke up in the hospital, Keith opened his door.

It was midnight, and Lance was restless, flipping through the pages of _The Help, _one of the few books that hadn’t been destroyed in the invasion, that had been purposefully saved. He set it down slowly as Keith shut the door, leaning his forehead against the wood for a moment. His hair slid down his cheeks, hiding his expression. Lance set his book aside.

“I’m sorry,” Keith whispered. He was hoarse.

Lance shifted over in bed. “Keith.”

He looked up, eyes sinking into the open spot and the gentle gesture. His steps were shaky as he crossed the room, and Lance remembered that his leg had been hurt in the fight. “Where’s your crutch?” he demanded, a little panicked.

Keith huffed as he eased onto the bed. “My room. Would have woken Mom up if I had been too loud. Probably woke her up anyway.”

He stayed on the edge, back to Lance, and hunched in on himself. Lance let him. It probably made it easier for him. “I’m sorry,” he said again, softer this time.

“You already said that,” Lance tried to joke, but he couldn’t deny that his chest was cracking at finally being acknowledged.

Keith’s shoulders trembled. “I…I shouldn’t have left. And I did. And…we were on that space whale, you know? Me and my mom. It showed me…”

He took a breath and tilted his head back. Lance had to fight the urge to card his fingers through his hair. “What?”

Keith twisted, dragging his legs up onto the bed with a wince and leaning back on one of Lance’s pillows. He curled his hands together on his stomach and stared up at the ceiling. Lance turned in bed, settling a hand under his cheek and watching him.

“It showed me everything. Things from my past…now. But things from my – our – past, then. Everything. I was…_such _a dick.”

“Was?” Lance huffed.

Keith flinched and he backpedaled. “Hey, hey, kidding. Kidding dude.”

Lance reached out and settled a hand over Keith’s clasped hands. Keith responded, much to his surprise, and turned over the top hand so that Lance could thread their fingers together. “We were never actually together,” Keith whispered.

“I know.”

That got him to finally look at Lance, eyes wide. “What?”

Lance gave him a sad smile. “I remembered a lot, man. While you were gone. It…the ship got lonely, so I spent a lot of time alone.”

Keith’s lips parted, the look in his eyes soft and shaking. Lance squeezed his hand. “It’s okay, though. I remembered pretty much everything except-”

“Your name.”

Lance let out a breath through his nose. “Yeah. Can’t remember it. You?”

Keith shook his head. “No. You…you know mine though.”

It wasn’t a question, but Lance nodded anyway. “And-?”

“Yeah.”

They lapsed into silence, staring at one another. Keith swallowed after a moment and shut his eyes, lowering his head against his shoulder. “We weren’t even…so then how can we possibly be soulmates, Lance?”

“You can’t tell me that…that you didn’t feel something back then,” Lance whispered.The beeping of the machines behind him was soft, the hum of the fan in the corner monotonous. He was glad the fluorescent lights weren’t on – it made this feel more intimate. Safe. “That you don't feel something now. That you didn’t want, or-or don't want us to be something. Because I know I did. I do. But we both…we both had our own towns to run.”

Keith snorted. “It sounds wild when you say it like that.”

“Am I wrong?”

Keith was quiet for so long that Lance started to worry he had said something wrong. Before he could muster up the courage to ask, Keith said, “No.”

“No?”

Keith lifted his eyes again and Lance sucked in a breath. Gold. “You’re not wrong.” Then, seeing the look on Lance’s face: “What?”

“Your eyes,” Lance breathed, and he wasn’t sure when their legs had tangled on top of the sheets or when Keith had turned to fully face him. “They’re gold.”

Keith let go of Lance and lifted his hand to his face self-consciously, brushing his fingers under his eyes. “Like…Galra gold or-?”

Lance swallowed and scooted just a little closer, taking Keith’s hand in his again and making Keith look at him. “Like…Prince Zuko gold.”

Something static passed between them and Keith suddenly had an intense look of understanding about him. He pulled their hands to his lips, settling them there, keeping his eyes on Lance. “Sometimes…sometimes your hair would just get shorter or longer for no reason. Or it’d be like…mohawk style, but in a ponytail.”

Lance stuck his tongue out. “Sure it wasn’t YOUR hair you were seeing? That sounds awful.”

Keith’s smile was kind. “It was cute. Your eyes, though…”

He quieted, his breath hot on Lance’s knuckles. “Your eyes are the same. A different shape…but the same color.”

Lance watched him, and the heart monitor behind him picked up pace a little. “What was it?” he asked, and he knew he didn’t need to specify.

“Sokka.”

It was like Keith had unlocked a door. Thoughts, memories, words, voices rang through Lance’s mind. He felt for just a moment like he was coming down from a high, much like the one he got the first time he flew Blue, and all the air escaped his lungs. “Thank you.”

Keith’s lips were hot, which Lance found wildly appropriate, and his body was lean, muscled, but not nearly as grizzled as Lance had previously believed. Keith gasped into his touch, free hand sliding up between them to settle on Lance’s chest.

Lance pulled back after a good several seconds, pressing his forehead to Keith’s and leaning back in to steal another peck. “I’ve been waiting…goddamn millennia to do that.”

Keith laughed and let his hand settle on Lance’s hip, dragging him even closer. “So do it again.”

“Hot headed bastard.”

“You know, I was a prince.”

“I’ve had enough of princes in this lifetime,” Lance snorted. He rolled, careful of Keith’s injuries, and settled on top of him, bodies aligning and his elbows planted on either side of Keith’s face. Keith’s hands were both on his waist now, and he nodded in agreement.

“Fair enough. And Lance?”

“Hmm?”

Keith lifted a hand up, dusting a strand of hair out of Lance’s face. His expression grew serious. “I’m sorry for leaving. I really am.”

Lance hummed and dropped a kiss on Keith’s left cheek, just under his eye. “I know. Thank you for coming back.”

Keith tilted his chin up to meet Lance for an actual kiss. “Always will.”


End file.
